


fetor and fertile

by pelele



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 12:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18591469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelele/pseuds/pelele
Summary: Newt walks to the grass. He sits down, watches the horizon, and waits for Vinda. Under his palms, lungwort grows.// A look into Newt's captivity in Nurmengard, and what follows there.





	fetor and fertile

The room he's kept in is not big. The floor and walls are made from the same pale rosewood, and it always bright like midday, though there's no windows or doors for Newt to find. Flowers take up every corner of the room, the walls, the floor. Gladioli lay on the small stone bench where he curls up. It is a carefully crafted illusion. The first day he woke there, he banged against the walls and demanded for his creatures, and he screamed. He screamed for days, until his throat was raw, until he could taste blood and his lips cracked, chapped from days without water.

It is Vinda who discovers him clawing at the walls like a caged beast. Dressed all in black, she is a mourner in contrast to his colorful plumage, though the cut of her dress the filigree on her boots is not made for funerals. She smiles at him and it holds no malice. His broken wand is in her hands and she drops it at his feet. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you Monsieur Scamander.”

He manages to scratch her before she leaves, her lower lip now bearing an angry red split. His hands scrape on the floor long after he has worn away his nails, until he leaves streaks of blood on the wooden panels, through the gaps he can make from the curled overgrown plants.

 

ii.

The first days, Newt sings to fill the emptiness. He lays motionless on the floor, gaze firmly placed on the ceiling. Vines wind around him, his wrist, his legs. The gladioli wither and others bloom its place. Their winded stems remind him of the weaving his mother and aunts would do, the way Newt would watch their skilful fingers thread that fabric. In and about, weaving in time to song.

When he sings it is as though he no longer resides in his body, so he sings, everything he can think. The songs he heard in different cities and village, the bawdy melodies his schoolmates once taught one another. The lullabies of his childhood — cradles rocked by watchful saints. Emeralds and sparrows. Faithful dark-eyed lovers, weaving and weaving and waiting. Newt sings through the protests of his hurt throat, licking the sweat off his palms to soften his dry tongue.

“Your voice is heavenly,” Vinda tells him one time, in company of Abernathy and Gundar. Newt sings again that night, but his voice sounds vacant, and soon he finds he cannot anymore.

 

iii.

He doesn't know the amount of time he stays in captivity. Time is lacks weight in the room where it is always daytime. He misses the weight of his creatures, the familiar feel of the worn-leather case in his hands, and feels his body eat away with each passing day. The flowers are Newt's only steady companion and curl around him, taking his strength. He withers in time to their blooming, cypress threatening to suffocate him, to consume every space of the room and leave nothing left.

No one comes for him, and after a while, when he can touch thumb to finger on his forearm, Newt gives up entirely. Before, Queenie would visit him, as would the others, but after he ripped off some of her honey curls and told her he would sooner rip her tongue out, they all gave him a wide berth. Only Vinda, who had laughed when she saw the other woman crying and holding at her head, keeps him company now. She brings him bits of the outside world, things that once lived and held warmth in them — dogbane flowers, a shard of his wand wood, two feathers from a shrike bird, still speckled with blood. One day, she brings him a British Auror, and Newt's heart soars only to falter when he realizes it's not his brother.

Newt hates her, but he does not say it. He does not speak now, and he does not fear the possibility that he can't anymore. Perhaps Grindelwald has taken it as well, like he did everything else. But here, with her, he doesn't need to speak. There is enough said in the way he flinches, the curve of her arm as she casts Cruciatus until the Auror dies from exhaustion. “Sing for me again  _ mon piaf _ , my lark, little nightingale.” The Auror's blood is in the beds of her nails, which dig into Newt's jaw. It is the only maculation on her. “Go on. Let me hear your voice.”

Vinda jabs her wand on the front of his throat, her hand, the back of his neck, keeps them there as he goes red in the face. Her slender fingerprints bruise him quickly, purple-green like the ones on his chest. She holds it there and digs, digs,  _ digs _ until spots dance in Newt's vision, bright white stars that blend and blur. He presses his teeth together until his gums ache and bleed, but he does not sing.

 

iv.

She wants to carve a place inside him for herself. She holds her wand like she would a knife whenever she talks to him, and watches him as though she intends to find the perfect spot to dig it into. At first, Newt hates Vinda with a hatred he never knew possible. "I would rather die than have you in me," he tells her as she kills another Auror, this time an American that recognized Newt from New York.

Even so, he finds his hands shaking. She is the only companion she has had in so long, the only voice he has heard. The only touch he has felt. The Auror calls him a coward before Vinda snaps his neck. Newt shakes. It is so cold in the room, and she is blissfully warm.

 

v.

“Tell me about your family.”

His mother and aunts weave and sing, sing and weave. Theseus kneels at their side and learns the simple spells, knots and intent. _ You should have died instead of her _ , Theseus had told him, drunk on firewhiskey and grief. A bracelet that had belonged to Leta is in his fist. Colors for protection, knots and intents.  _ I loved her, it should have been you _ . Leta is now a ghost that followed him everywhere, her weight on his back as she rested, though she cannot reach him here. Newt expects to see her charred face, her curls spilling over her shoulder, her mouth pulled back in a vacant smile, but there is only Vinda with a tray.

She places the wine and bread in front of him, and Newt, famished, wastes no time in devouring it. The stale bread down his throat has him wincing and the watered-down wine is mostly spilt over his shirt from his desperate drinking, but he accepts it without complaint, never taking his gaze from her. Strips of light bounce from her necklace and break everything into fractals, blue like the caps of chaffinches. Vinda is bright and flushed with color in the dullness of the room.

_ Your selfish indecisiveness, your obsession with those creature, they took her away! You were a coward and she paid the price for it _ . Newt had watched them form pairs in desperation: Theseus and Dumbledore, Jacob and Tina, Nagini and Yusuf, seeking each other for strength. There was an animosity between them and he now, his refusal to choose a side at fault. He had been shipwrecked for days in a solitude that, before usual, was now truly oppressive. Newt was as invisible as a gust of wind to them. That's why it took them long to notice when Gundar came to him that day, wand raised high, allowing him to live only by orders of Grindelwald.

“Shall I tell you about mine?” Vinda folds her hands in front of her, a girl reciting poetry from memory. Newt imagines her in Beauxbaton blue, a child snapping the necks off songbirds to understand their insides, hanging her roommates from the minarets to see how much weight a robe could withhold. “I had a cousin I loved dearly, his name was Lepus. Lepus was the pride and joy of my family, until we found out he was a  _ cracmol _ , a squib. My brother and I pushed him down the stairs and watched his skull crack while our parents already began to burn him from the family tree.” She reaches for his face and traces a scar hidden under his curls. “You look so much like him when he died.”

Newt spits in her face, an act that takes more effort than it should. He thinks of his creatures and stands to his full height, shows teeth and nails. “Go to hell,” he grouses in an unfamiliar voice, and Vinda laughs and slaps him, making warmth bubble in his chest. It is so long since he was heard such a beautiful sound.

 

vi.

Vinda does not visit every day. She is Grindelwald's most favored and most trusted acolyte. Often, she is gone for days with him, sometimes weeks, following him as he burns a path through Europe like fiendfyre. She brings Newt gifts from wherever she goes.

She does not return to him for a month. Two pass. Three. His food is brought to him by invisible servants. The flowers have now taken over the room, there is no place free from them, and they threaten to devour Newt too. None respond when he begins to scream once more. He wonders whether anyone at all can hear him. He knows he will die there. He will starve, or die of thirst, he will be forgotten, just like he was by his brother and the people he thought to call friends. None will ever know that he was there, that he existed. Not even his bones turn to dust will be found. Even his spirit, he fears, will be confined to the chamber, and no one, not even Leta's spirit, will find him, and he will be truly alone.

 

vii.

He told her about his family once. It seems fair, he said. He talks of his father, dead when he was still in Hogwarts, his mother with her dark eyes and her hippogriffs, her way of hiding, the eons old melancholy and rage that was buried deep in her marrow. His brother, who Newt finds he can barely remember these days, face blurry in his memories. Vinda braids him a crown of poppies and Newt tells her that his mother once said he looked like his father when he was younger. “But I have  _ her _ eyes.”

“Then she is beautiful.” She holds him in her arms, and Newt relishes the memory of her embrace, keeps it close to him as he waits for her return, terror mounting as the days she's gone grow.

 

viii.

One day, a gift arrives from Greece. Newt remembers time spent with family there, houses seemingly of impossible colors and orange trees reaching the heavens. The parcel is a small box, big enough to fit in his cradled palms. The scarf laying inside is Vinda's, the rich red one she had worn when Newt first was taken, and wrapped inside is a butterfly preserved forever by an old spell, keeping it alive and immobile, aware of its surrounding. It flutters anxiously and he uses his meager strength to make his fingertips burn with fire and singe the wings. Newt wraps the butterfly in the diaphanous fabric and buries his face against it, soaking up warmth Vinda left behind. 

 

ix.

The first night, he snarls and demands to be freed, threatens and cajoles into fights. The blood he left is still there, dried and brown.

The second night, he begs for his brother, plagued by fever dreams. He sees Theseus, Tina, Jacob, casting him to his death. His mother and aunts unweave blue fabric as his own hands wring Leta's neck, stretching out like a swan's.

The third night, he dreams of his creatures. The doxies and fwoopers and nifflers. They were half his soul, and gone, he feels like an empty shell going through the motions of life. He thinks of Swoop and Octi, Cassiopeia and Ginger and Blue, his loves, and thinks that his brother could go to hell.

The fourth night, he dreams of blue fire. Vinsa stands on the other side of it, arms open wide. Newt runs to her, the bodies of his old companions at his feet. Theseus’ neck snaps under his heel as he enters Vinda's embrace and Newt wakes up to vomit all over the chrysanthemums buds.

The fifth night he dreams of Vinda, and cries when he wakes and finds he's still alone.

 

x.

His head lays on Vinda's lap. Her fingers play with his hair. “From my mother’s family, we’re named after things that grow. Sorrel for joy. Burdock for abundance. Mint for virtue.” She returned after nearly five months abroad. Newt had thrown himself at her feet, cried into her skirt, begged her not to let him go until his words became unintelligible. Ipomaca blooms are braided into his hair. “My brother is Aster, for love and devotion. My mother is Acantha, the acanthus, immortality and fine arts.”

“And you?” Her eyes sparkle when she talks, they always do. Two suns rest in her face. All of her is brilliant. Newt feels likes a dying plant seeking the comfort of water and sun, bending towards her light, breathing in her air as though it is the only air he is to ever draw on. His face burrows into the fabric of her skirt. He can smell fire and blood on it, the spicy scents of potions and curses. She told him one almost claimed Tina's leg and he tells her to aim true next time. “There's never been a plant called Newt, to my knowledge, magical or not.”

He smiles to her like he holds a great secret. “Artemisia,” he whispers to her. “Wormwood. Bitterness and sorrow, absence.” Newt worries his newest present in his hands, a lone dragon claw.

“Endurance, dignity,” she counters, pinches his chin with her nails, and his smile is genuine. Newt stays like that, Vinda stroking his cheek, the flowers all around them. The scent of her sunflower perfume, earthy and honeyed, suffuses their scent. The two remain in silence until Newt sings, of dark-eyed lovers, of patience and endurance, of weaving and weaving and waiting.

 

xi.

She must leave again soon. He begs her not to but knows she must. Newt demands she come back to him with his brother and his team's heads on a silver platter. He plans to hang it from the vines in the cell, right next to the late Tina's broken wand, which Vinda brought him but a month ago.

“Would you like half my kingdom too, Salome?”

Newt turns his wrist around with a flair. “Shall I dance with seven veils for it?”

He sleeps after she leaves and when he wakes up, there's a door where there wasn't before. Newt turns the doorknob and finds it is open. He walks around Nurmengard, familiarizing himself with its nooks and crannies. He wonders if this is how Durmstrang was like, an imposing castle of stone with beauty threaded in every corner. It's daytime, summer if the heat is any indicator, and everything looks less real right then than it once did. He's alone.

The doors are all open, and Newt stands at the entrance to the castle. It groans in protest when he opens it. The light that hits his face is hot and blinding, reminding him how long he has been there. Alpine plants grow in disorder, fighting for space. The breeze blows his hair and overhead, a bird flies off. A yawning precipice is just a few steps ahead.

Newt walks to the grass. He sits down, watches the horizon, and waits for Vinda. Under his palms, lungwort grows.

**Author's Note:**

> Gladiolus: endurance  
> Cypress: despair  
> Dogbane: falsehood, deception  
> Chrysanthemums: death  
> Ipomaca: I attach myself to you  
> Poppy: sleep, death, peace  
> Sunflower: devotion  
> Lungwort: you are my life
> 
> Artemisia, aka the wormwood, symbolizes absence and bitterness, but also represent tranquility, happiness, dignity, and sends the message of “do not be discouraged”.
> 
> Follow me on @[tumblr](http://seraphinapiqcuery.tumblr.com) for more content, and hit me ask for a request!


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